Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Eggs laid in the UK by the world’s largest flying bird mark huge conservation success

24.07.2007

The scientist involved in helping re-introduce the Great Bustard to the UK is “delighted” that birds released at a secret Wiltshire location have laid their first eggs.

Dr Tamas Szekely from the University of Bath says that the announcement from the Great Bustard Group comes a year earlier than predicted, and shows that the project is making good progress.

The Great Bustard is the world’s largest flying bird and although it was hunted as a trophy until it became extinct in the UK in the 1830s, it still lives in stable populations in eastern Europe.

Since 2004, the Great Bustard Group has released more than 60 Great Bustard chicks, all hatched from eggs salvaged from nests destroyed by cultivation.

Due to fears of egg thieves and disturbance from bird watchers, the announcement that eggs had been laid in the UK was delayed. The eggs were incubated for a time by the female but were then abandoned. After examination they were found to be infertile.

“Males need to be four to five years old before they can breed, so the fact that the eggs were infertile was not a big surprise,” said Dr Szekely who is the project’s scientific adviser.

“What is encouraging is that the eggs were laid in the first place; unhappy birds do not produce eggs.

“The males have a spectacular courtship display which was seen in this country for the first time in over 175 years this year.

“This is a very exciting time for the project, and marks an important step towards a breeding population of Great Bustards in the UK.”

Male Great Bustards stand around 90-105 cm (about 3 ft) tall and can weigh up to 20 kilos (3 stones). Females tend to be much smaller.

“Great Bustards are a magnificent species and birdwatchers have it as one of their top species to see,” said Dr Szekely, from the University’s Department of Biology & Biochemistry.

“They are shy and easily disturbed, so it is encouraging to see these developments.

"They next step is to see the first Great Bustard chicks hatch, and we very much hope that will happen within the next two years.”

Die letzten 5 Focus-News des innovations-reports im Überblick:

Whether you call it effervescent, fizzy, or sparkling, carbonated water is making a comeback as a beverage. Aside from quenching thirst, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have discovered a new use for these "bubbly" concoctions that will have major impact on the manufacturer of the world's thinnest, flattest, and one most useful materials -- graphene.

As graphene's popularity grows as an advanced "wonder" material, the speed and quality at which it can be manufactured will be paramount. With that in mind,...

Physicists at the University of Bonn have managed to create optical hollows and more complex patterns into which the light of a Bose-Einstein condensate flows. The creation of such highly low-loss structures for light is a prerequisite for complex light circuits, such as for quantum information processing for a new generation of computers. The researchers are now presenting their results in the journal Nature Photonics.

Light particles (photons) occur as tiny, indivisible portions. Many thousands of these light portions can be merged to form a single super-photon if they are...

For the first time, scientists have shown that circular RNA is linked to brain function. When a RNA molecule called Cdr1as was deleted from the genome of mice, the animals had problems filtering out unnecessary information – like patients suffering from neuropsychiatric disorders.

While hundreds of circular RNAs (circRNAs) are abundant in mammalian brains, one big question has remained unanswered: What are they actually good for? In the...

A study led by scientists of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science in Hamburg presents evidence of the coexistence of superconductivity and “charge-density-waves” in compounds of the poorly-studied family of bismuthates. This observation opens up new perspectives for a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of high-temperature superconductivity, a topic which is at the core of condensed matter research since more than 30 years. The paper by Nicoletti et al has been published in the PNAS.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, superconductivity had been observed in some metals at temperatures only a few degrees above the absolute zero (minus...